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Zodiac Killer /// Part 1 /// 795
01:01:02
Zodiac Killer /// Part 1 /// 795 Part 1 of 2www.TrueCrimeGarage.com This is the Zodiac speaking… the words of a killer. The haunting words of a killer determined to terrorize and taunt the public in and around the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 60s and early 70s. We featured this case at length a few years back with “The Zodiac” parts 1 through 5. Those episodes are available for your listening pleasure and are True Crime Garage episodes #470 to #474, released March 9th through March 17th 2021. This week we revisit one of the most infamous unsolved and unidentified serial killer cases in all of True Crime. The Zodiac killer serial murder case. To help us further investigate we are joined by Zodiac expert Dr. Mark Hewitt. Mark has authored a Zodiac trilogy with his series The Zodiac Serial Killer. The trilogy is available everywhere you buy books with books:Hunted - The Zodiac Serial Killer - book one - The Zodiac Murders Profiled - The Zodiac Serial Killer - book two...
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- [00:00]
Nick
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- [00:45]
Captain
Lemon, lime and a drop of cherry make a simple Shirley. But what happens when Tito's handmade vodka reveals this sweet sippers dirty secret. Stir up a Tito's dirty Sherlock and crack the case with tito's@tito's vodka.com 40% alcohol by volume, namely 80 proof. Crafted to be savored responsibly.
- [01:53]
Nick
Welcome to True crime Garage wherever you are, whatever you are doing. Thanks for listening. I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who knows knows that if you want our attention, you just gotta show us a little ear, baby. Here is the captain.
- [02:07]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
Yeah, or you could drop your pants. It's good to be seen and good to see you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling a friend.
- [02:17]
Nick
This week we are featuring hazy pale ale by the hardworking folks at Standard Deviate Brewing. This is a delicious traditional hazy. It's hoppy but still on the lighter bodied side with plenty of grapefruit to smooth it out, giving it a refreshing finish. Garage grade three and three quarter bottle caps out of five. And let's give some thanks and praise to our good garage friends for helping us fill up the garage fridge for this week's shows. First up, a shout out to Emily and Dan from Potts Town, Pennsylvania.
- [02:54]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
And a big we like your jib goes out to Mary from Columbus, Ohio.
- [02:58]
Nick
And last but certainly not least, we have Debbie Wales in Asheville, North Carolina. Our thoughts and prayers shout everybody in Asheville and everybody affected by all of the tragic weather events that we've had recently. Hang in there everybody. We're thinking of you. Everyone we just mentioned went to truecrimegarage.com they clicked on the pint glass and that helped us out with this week's shows. And for that we thank you.
- [03:25]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
Yeah, BWR you and beer run. You need more True Crime Garage? Just go to YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel putting out all the old episodes of off the Record and Colonel. That's enough of the business.
- [03:40]
Nick
All right everybody gather around. Grab A chair, Grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime. The Zodiac serial killer claimed the lives of at least five young victims between the years of 1966 and 1974 and mocked the police with telephone calls, taunting letters, and encrypted messages. Thousands of men have been accused. Nearly 2500 have been investigated. Yet the Zodiac has never been identified. From the Zodiac's cold, calculated attacks and taunting letters to the media has grabbed the attention of several generations. This true crime story continues to fascinate because it's brutality and the lingering question, who is the Zodiac? And here to help us with that question, and that answer perhaps, is a one Dr. Mark Hewitt, who is the author of several books that focus on the Zodiac murders case and some of the suspects as well. And those books are titled Hunted the Zodiac Serial Killer, Book One, the Zodiac Murders. As well as Profiled the Zodiac, Examined, Exposed, the Zodiac revealed. And Dr. Mark Hewitt, you have a new book that is hitting the shelves. Why don't you tell us about your latest work?
- [05:32]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
Yes, good morning. First of all, thank you for having me. It's, it's a pleasure to be here. Following the Zodiac Serial Killer trilogy that I wrote back in 16, 17 and 18, I've been fielding a lot of questions. People have been asking me, how did you get into the Zodiac? What, what fascinates you about it? How far did you go as far as your research? And so I wrote a memoir that I just released three weeks ago. It's entitled Obsessed My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer. It doesn't have a whole lot of new information on the Zodiac Serial Killer. It's actually my perspective on what I did. It's, it's an explanation of the 11 years of research I did to produce the Zodiac Serial Killer series earlier. And so I go into some of the places that I went, some of the people that I've, I spoke to, and some of the granularity of what I looked into and how deep the obsession took me.
- [06:35]
Nick
Let's go back in time, Mark, and let's talk about some of the things that were featured in your very first Zodiac book. So in your book Hunted, you describe the known facts of the infamous Zodiac case, mainly the attacks and the murders. And you go on to talk about the Zodiac phone calls and the letters that the Zodiac sent as well. Now, a lot of our listeners are going to know the long time listeners because we have covered the Zodiac here in the past in the garage, and it's a very infamous case. It's, it's well known and Many people have taken a look at this case. But for those that may not know, and those that would like a little bit of a refresher, maybe a primer on some of these attacks and murders. Could you take the listeners through the attacks and murders, starting with the Lake Herman road case from December 20, 1968?
- [07:33]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
Sure, I'd be glad to. You guys have done very good work on the Zodiac case. I know that you have a comprehensive. I think it's a five part podcast series that goes into great detail and so I won't repeat all of that. But my first book, Hunted the Zodiac Murders, has been heralded as the most accurate and most detailed retelling of the Zodiac case. I sat down and put a lot of work into telling the story from primary sources. A lot of mythology is created into this, the retelling of the Zodiac case, and I attempt to get away from that on a number of occasions. I included both sides of arguments because people couldn't agree. In fact, there's differing testimony on precisely what happened. But if you're looking for a comprehensive deep dive, that's the most detailed and most accurate retelling of the case that would be in Hunted, the Zodiac serial killer is a serial killer who attacked in Northern California, predominantly the Vallejo area. The canonical attacks are only four attacks that resulted in the death of five people. But like many serial killers, exactly when the killer started and when the killer ended is not entirely clear. There are attacks before the canonical four and there are murders following. And some have tried to implicate the Zodiac in them. But it's not clear whether the Zodiac was responsible or not. The first canonical attack took place at Lake Herman Road on December 20, 1968. A young couple, David Faraday, who was 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, who was 16, were going on a date. They had been boyfriend and girlfriend for a couple weeks, these two high school students, but this was their first serious date, their first actual scheduling of a time to get together. And it's kind of a cute story. David went to Betty Lou's home and met her parents and talked to them and assured them that he would have Betty lou back by 11 o'clock. Unfortunately for the two of them, he didn't. It was Betty Lou's first date ever, so it was kind of an event and kind of a tragic ending. Around 11 o'clock, the two were parked at a turnout along Lake Herman Road by witnesses who drove by. There was a six minute window. If all of the witnesses were saying what they saw and remembering correctly, there was A six minute window in which somebody drove up beside them, parked the car and apparently shot the two of them to death. The person in this vehicle was able to escape without notice or much description in and of itself. This particular case became one of the largest unsolved murder murders in California. A number of neighboring jurisdictions assured Solano county that they would assist in the in that explanation and assist in the investigation. To this day, it has never been solved. Seven months later, on the 4th of July, a second Zodiac attack occurred at the Blue Rock Springs Park. It's a three mile drive from the turnout at Lake Herman Road where the first attack took place and it's only about two miles as the crow flies. Michael Mageau, who is 19, Darlene Farron, who is 22, arrived at the park on the Fourth of July evening as fireworks were going off around the town. They were there to talk and at some point while they were there, a car drove up behind them, parked and acting like a police vehicle. A spotlight emerged and the couple thought that they were being accosted by the police, so they started to fumble for their driver's licenses. The man got out of the vehicle, walked up to the driver's side and opened fire on Michael Mageau and Darlene Ferrin. Darlene Farron was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Michael Mageau miraculously survived despite being shot in the thigh and the jaw and in the arm. About seven or eight weeks later, at Lake Berryessa, the third Zodiac attack occurred. You'll notice the progression from a seven month break to seven week break at Lake Variesa. 20 year old Brian Hartnell and 22 year old Cecilia Shepard were reclining by the water enjoying the beauty of the day on a Saturday afternoon. And a man walked up to them who was dressed in a black square hood with a black bib pulled down over his shirt and he was training a gun on the two. He talked to them for as much as 15 minutes. He cajoled them into being tied up. He hog tied them. He assured them throughout the time that he was only interested in their car keys and in some money because he claimed to be an escaped convict. But once they were hog tied on the ground, he pulled out a foot long bayonet style knife and began to stab them. He stabbed Brian Hartnell as many as six times and then turned his attention to Cecilia, who he stabbed 10 times, five times in the front, five times in the back.
- [13:09]
Nick
I'm going to jump in here because you talked about the progression and this is something that I want to make sure that we really underline for everybody out there listening, because what we're seeing here is a morphing, a change of the MO as well as the killer himself. So with the first two cases, it's no mistake, right? We know that he is arriving on scene prepared to do something. We have to assume that it's prepared to murder because he, he fires bullets into both of these cars. And in both situations we know he's arriving on scene with a firearm, with a flashlight. And then there is no, we don't have confirmation that he ever entered the vehicle or touched, physically touched, put hands on any of those victims. But then when we get to the Lake Berryessa case, it's very strange because he's using a car to attack people in cars in two situations. And now he's on foot, he's abandoned the vehicle, parked it likely at the parking lot, and then he's approached the two persons that are in this, let's call it a park. He approaches them on foot, but he comes so well equipped to this scene, right. He's ready to tie them up. And now this is a very hands on attack, which is completely different. He's, he's actually even had interaction with them, telling them that I'm, I'm just going to take your, your wallet. They're talking with him as well. So it's not only the progression of the, how quickly we are going from murder to murder in such a short window of time now, it's also this one's very hands on and it feels quite different than the first two.
- [14:57]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
Precisely, yes, he was, was dressed differently in an obvious disguise. It happened before nightfall. He approached them and spoke with them for as much as 15 minutes. So yes, there seems to be a progression in the manner in which he approached the two of them following the stabbing. He left the couple for dead and walked back up to where he left his car, which was about a quarter mile walk from the lake. Brian Hartnell miraculously survived. Cecilia Shepard slipped into a coma and she passed away two days later. Then, exactly two weeks following the Lake Berryessa attack, the Zodiac showed up in the Pacific Presidio Heights district of San Francisco. He apparently hailed a cab in the Theater district of San Francisco, near the intersection of Mason and Geary, took a cab out to Presidio Heights. And once Paul Stein, the 29 year old cab driver, pulled over to the side of the road, the Zodiac shot him a single time in the head before getting out of the vehicle. On this occasion, the Zodiac took the cab driver's car keys and wallet. And he also tore off a tail from the shirt that the cab driver was wearing and took these with him as he fled the scene into the Presidio park to disappear. So those are the four attacks. And apparently he made a major change following that because he was cited by a couple of teenagers who were looking out the window and noticed what was taking place, and they called the police, and the police arrived on the scene within minutes. It seems to have terrified the Zodiac so much that in a follow up letter, he said he was going to change the way he was doing things and that he would no longer announce the murders that took place and he would try to make them look like accidents or murders of anger or other deceptions. So as far as we know, this was the last known Zodiac serial killing crime. But the way that he announced that he was going to change it left everybody wondering. Well, did he actually stop or did he continue from that point? He morphed into a serial killer who was more interested in sending letters than he wasn't killing. Because we know of no future murders that definitively tied to the Zodiac. But for the next five years, he sent as many as a dozen additional letters to the police, to the press, and then in 1974, the last known confirmed Zodiac letter was sent. And from there, we have no idea what happened to the Zodiac. Despite the fact that there were additional letters that came that may or may not have been from the Zodiac, there were additional murders that may or may not have been the responsibility of the Zodiac. And as far as anybody knows for certain, following 1974, the Zodiac slipped off the pages of history and disappeared forever.
- [18:07]
Nick
Do you think, and this would be pure speculation here, of course, but what else can we do with these types of cases, especially these many years later? I've often wondered, with the final murder in the canonical five, do you think that the Zodiac put himself into a position, I. E. A cab, the back of a cab. And at that time, of course, the majority, the overwhelming majority of cab drivers are going to be male. But do you think that his lack of success in killing the males in the previous attacks led him to placing himself into a situation where he would be killing a solo male to not necessarily prove something to himself, but prove something to the general public or law enforcement, what law enforcement may have thought of him?
- [19:09]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
That's entirely possible. You mentioned speculation. I tend to shy away from speculating. When I'm asked questions, I will respond from the facts of the case. But a number of theories have grown up around the case relating to why Paul Stein, why a single male, why San Francisco? And it may be that he was trying to prove his manhood because two men survived his attacks. It's also possible that he moved to San Francisco because he wanted to increase his catchment area of attention. He wanted the San Francisco press to be more involved in the San Francisco Police Department, to elevate his status as a serial killer. And one way to find somebody and call them from the crowd is to get in a cab and direct the cab to where you want to go. And Presidio Heights is a rather quiet neighborhood with respect to San Francisco and its situation right near the Presidio park gave him an ample opportunity to escape the situation. So it could have been either of those, or it could have been something entirely different. We are not sure. He never explained why he apparently altered his situation in the press. He was described as being a potential latent homosexual. And he may have been responding to that because we know that the Zodiac, it seems apparent from his attacks and his letters that he followed his own press and responded to it. So that may have been part of it as well.
- [20:42]
Nick
I feel like it could be a culmination of all of those aspects of the Paul Stein case. And then you're right, because Zodiac clearly. I mean, one thing he did tell us is he expected to have some kind of nationwide notoriety. So we know that he was seeking that or at least expected to have that. And a large city like San Francisco may provide that on that scale for him. And then, unfortunately for Paul Stein, a cab driver is a easy victim.
- [21:20]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
Yes. There's also a theory that the Zodiac was plotting out his attacks on a map so that they fit in a certain criteria. A cab driver is a good opportunity to take somebody and place them where you want them to be on the map. So that may have something to do with it as well. But until we know for certain, that's just speculation.
- [21:46]
Can you explain that a little more?
- [21:48]
Well, the Zodiac, in one of his letters, mentions a radian angle. And he mentions it in combination with a code that he sent and a piece of map that he sent to the newspaper to publicize his attacks and publicize himself. And he said, if you solve this code, it relates to where he has placed a bomb. And he mentions the code will describe, in radians and inches, the location of a bomb that has been set. Well, no bomb was ever found, but people began to ask questions such as, what is a radian angle? Turns out it's an angle about 67, 68 degrees. And people have plotted that angle on the collection of attack sites and speculated that the attack in the Presidio Heights made a 1 radiant angle between that and the other crime scenes. Now, there's been debate as to whether that is precisely true or whether that was the intention of the Zodiac because he mentioned Radians in an entirely different situation. He mentioned it in reference to his code, but people are applying it to the layout of the map and where the crimes took place. Maybe the Zodiac was trying to express something that way. Maybe there was a purpose for having Paul Stein killed in the Presidio Heights. We can only speculate at this point.
- [23:24]
Nick
In Hunted, we talk about the phone calls and some of the letters as well. How many phone calls do you think that the Zodiac made? We will never know for certain. But how many phone calls do you think that the Zodiac made and what are the nature of these calls? You know, we have the phone calls from Zodiac to police and the news outlets, but we do know he made calls that were, for example, to the Vallejo police after the Blue Rock Springs shooting and murder.
- [24:01]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
Yes, the Zodiac is known to have made two telephone calls in post attack behavior, both times notifying the police that an attack had taken place and that a murder had taken place and that he was responsible for it. We don't know of any phone call after the Lake Herman Road attack. He may have, if it's never been reported. Following the Fourth of July attack, about 40 minutes following the attack, he made a telephone call to the Vallejo Police Department and claimed credit for the attack and described where the victims could be found in their car. Following the attack at Lake Berryessa, he drove to, apparently drove to Napa and made a call to the sheriff's department claiming credit for the attack that took place up at Lake Berryessa. Why precisely he did this is not entirely clear. It's a rather unusual activity. Generally, murderers do not like to get caught, do not like to be put in prison, so they do what they can to not be caught. Because the Zodiac did this two times and did it in conjunction with murders. This is a signature activity because it was in no way necessary to carry out the murder. And it put him at great risk to do that. The fact that he made telephone calls from the from, from payphones meant that the police could capture fingerprints. And they collected a number of fingerprints from phone booths. Unfortunately, none of them have ever been traced back to the Zodiac or traced to anybody for that matter. But it was a very risky venture. There are other phone calls that may have been made in conjunction with attacks prior to the Zodiac's canonical five murders in Southern California. He may have been responsible for the murder of a cab driver. And that murder included a telephone call to the police prior to the attack and another phone call following up after the attack. We're not certain whether this was even the Zodiac, but the fact that it was a cab driver and included associated telephone calls gives some evidence that maybe it was connected, maybe it was the same perpetrator. And also in the Sherry Jo Bates attack in Riverside, California in October of 1966, one month following the murder of a young co ed, the perpetrator evidently sent a letter to the police and to the press claiming credit for the attack and mentioning the fact that yes, it was him who made the phone call following the murder. Well, we don't know anything about the phone call. It has never been reported upon. But the apparent killer evidently took credit for making a telephone call in the follow up of the of this murder. And you asked about the contents of the phone calls. He boasted about what he had done. He presented details in a very unemotional manner. There was no regret in his voice. There was no sense of the horror that was involved. He merely reported on these murders. And people were left to wonder, why did he communicate this? The police were able to quickly get to the crime scenes and find out that yes, indeed he had carried out the murders in the way he said he had. It seems to be evidence of his need to prove that he had done these and also to to claim credit the phone call that he made following the Blue Rock Springs park attack. He also took credit for the earlier attack at Lake Herman Road, which was the first indication that the two attacks were indeed linked to a single person.
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- [31:26]
Captain
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- [31:55]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
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- [33:36]
Nick
He'S connecting the murders for the police via these phone calls, especially with that first one after the Blue Rock Springs shooting and murder. But to me, he feels like a bit of a headline prostitute. Right? He loves these headlines. Can't wait to read about himself and his acts and the terror that he has bringing to these areas and to the people that live there. And it's. It's almost like to me, like he couldn't get that payment for what he had done fast enough. So I gotta phone this in. So they find these people right away. Make no mistake, he's not phoning it in, hoping that paramedics can show up on the scene and save anybody. No, I think he's phoning it in. Wants to see those headlines as quick as possible. Some speculation that I've seen over the years that I thought was very fascinating as well is that that he likely had got some kind of kick out of hearing the sirens after the call is made, and they rush off to the scene to go and to discover and shock, complete shock, what he had just done.
- [34:45]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
Yeah, these are entirely reasonable speculations. The phone calls were placed from locations at phone booths close to the police stations that the Zodiac had called into. So it is possible that he heard the sirens though police. Police cars at that time were contacted by radio. So it's unlikely that a police car would have left the police station to respond. But nevertheless, he put himself in a little bit of danger by being very close to a police department. Why exactly he made these phone calls? It's not certain. It's a very reasonable suspicion that he was looking for headlines. I believe following some of his attacks, he received front page coverage in some major newspapers for as many as 21 days in a row. When he sent a letter, they were generally reproduced in newspapers. And obviously, when he made his attacks, these were reported upon. It seemed to be that he was looking for attention. In fact, he wrote to the Los Angeles Times in a later letter decrying the fact that the Bay Area papers weren't putting him on the front page anymore. So it's precisely that. That he may have been looking for front page coverage, looking to revel in his handiwork and show himself to be important, which tends to be a theme among serial killers. They tend to be very ineffectual people, and they do what they do to demonstrate for themselves or for the world that they have control, that they can control another person. And what's the ultimate manner of control is actually taking somebody else's life.
- [36:34]
Do you think it was just attention that he was seeking, or do you think the Zodiac was trying to give some message to society?
- [36:43]
It's all. It's all an area of speculation, and a whole lot has been. A lot of ink has been spilled in that area. It's not clear if he had a message. In a couple of his letters, he let know that he was killing people because he was collecting slaves for the afterlife. And what exactly was meant by that is not entirely clear. People have spent a lot of time looking into world religions where there's an idea that if you kill somebody, they become your slave for the afterlife. That could have been something just to lead investigators astray. It may have meant something very personal to him. It's never been made entirely clear.
- [37:26]
Nick
Always got this feeling of this guy that's trying to best everyone, and that's really what it felt like. And it's like after the Paul Stein murder, he gets so close to getting caught, in my humble opinion, then later has to rub the cops noses in it, going, oh, well, if you just would have stuck around, I was hiding in the park, you would have found me. But all you guys are too dumb to get the best of me. Once again, I got the best of you. But he almost gets caught. And it's like a little boy who picks up the ball and says, I'm going home because he finally lost a game. And, and I always thought of that, like he's always constantly trying to best everyone and the slaves in the afterlife thing is not something that we haven't heard from other serial killers. BTK talked about it. Captain, Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there was some. We talked about this a little bit with Israel Keys as well. But this, this afterlife of, well, I, I am infinite. I will go on these people, I've ended them. And while, while all of you can't find me and continue to look for me and identify me, you never will. And I will be reaping the rewards of my, the fruits of my adventures and these horrible acts that I've done.
- [38:48]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
I believe that's entirely reasonable. In the six page letter that was sent a month after the Paul Stein murder, the Zodiac comes across as a petulant child who is bragging to the police of how smart he is and all of the different acts of subterfuge that he has used against them. He talks about buying his guns out of state or through the mail. He talks about wearing fingertip guards on his hands to not leave any fingerprints behind, et cetera, et cetera. Basically saying, I'm so smart, I have outsmarted you, you can't find me. He even mentions in the letter, I've been too clever for the police. Now why do you do all this? Because you're clever? No, it's because you feel like you're not clever and you have a point to make. I think it's very easy to overlook how close the Zodiac got to being captured that night because he was seen by teenagers. A composite picture was created in the aftermath and it was posted all over San Francisco. A police officer rushing to the scene drove by who he thought to be the Zodiac later on because it went out over the radio that they were looking for an African American male. And this police officer, as he drove to the scene, noticed a white man walking along the road. And he slowed down, took a look at him, saw that he wasn't African American, assumed he had nothing to do with the the attack, and then sped off to the crime scene. The Zodiac in a follow up letter, said, no, you, you almost had me, and essentially claimed that that was the person who was responsible. But the Zodiac added that the police officers pulled over and spoke to him. So there's a disagreement there as to precisely what happened. Did the police officers talk to the Zodiac or did they just drive by? That's never been completely answered. But had they realized that it was the Zodiac, he could have been caught at that time, or there could have been a gunfight that ensued from that. Only by sheer luck and the incorrect reporting that he was able to escape into the Presidio park, and that may have terrified him from ever killing again, or at least terrified him from ever killing up close and personal.
- [41:16]
Nick
He's not lying when he says that he wears, you know, I wear disguises. Okay, so he's not lying because we know clearly, the Lake Berryessa attack, he's wearing a disguise. He's wearing a hood with sunglasses and a whole get up. It doesn't get more of a disguise than that. But at the same time, let's pretend and look at this from the angle that he's not wearing disguises at the other attacks, but when he's seen at the Paul Stein attack by eyewitnesses and then potentially by police, with maybe an interaction with police as well. Of course, he's got to say, I wear disguises. Right? Because either he was wearing one in the moment when he's witnessed, or now it's planting the seed of, well, don't believe too much of what you've seen, because I wear disguises. So he's certainly no dummy on that front.
- [42:11]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
That seems to be the motive behind claiming to wear a disguise. He wrote that he wears a disguise, but only wears it during his attacks, and that draws into question the accuracy of the photos that were circulated. And so that suggests that the likeness was at least close enough to give him fear that he could be captured as a result of the pictures that were being circulated. Unfortunately, at the time, everybody wore short hair. And so the Zodiac pictures that have been circulated look like pretty much every male in high school. Their graduation picture, it looked exactly like that, with very short cropped hair. And so precisely who was the Zodiac? Eyewitness reports tend to be very poor, so obviously he hasn't been caught as a result of his. The circulated picture.
- [43:07]
Nick
Staying away from naming any specific suspects, or good or otherwise. You said something that I think is very intelligent and powerful in regard to the Zodiac's communications with the media, with police phone calls, letters, but in particular with the letters, and I've heard you say in the past that one doesn't write. I guess it was, what, about as.
- [43:37]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
Many as two dozen?
- [43:38]
Nick
How much? 20 letters. So you don't write 20 letters. Yeah. Without telling something about yourself. Take us. Take us through that. What, in your opinion, with all the research that you've Done. Mark, what do the as many as two dozen letters tell us about the author who penned those letters?
- [43:59]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
That many letters obviously say something about it, Their creator. What precisely it says is open to debate. A new area of forensics and criminology that has opened up recently is the area of forensic linguistics. And I believe there is great opportunity there to not only discover something about the Zodiac, but identify precisely who he is. I guess it's based on the idea that everybody uses language differently. The way I speak is different than the way you speak. The word selection that I choose over the course of a conversation or the course of writing a letter would be different than the words that you would choose. And precisely how we place them across the page with punctuation, with grammar, with layout on the page is different. It's based on our childhood experiences. It's based on our experiences in life. It's based on the culture around us, what type of words are used, how they are used. So I think there's a great opportunity there. And yet this is a very new field. It's been used more recently in certain crimes where people leave behind a note. Obviously, if they misspell something and that perpetrator in other notes misspells the same word, you get an indication that maybe the same person is responsible for both of them. What makes it exceedingly difficult in the Zodiac case is that there is evidence that the Zodiac faked his handwriting, faked what he was saying, faked his level of intelligence, and even faked his ability to use punctuation and use grammar. So how can you identify somebody who is pretending not to be himself through words? But I believe with developments in AI and supercomputers, it may sometime become a viable avenue of investigation to look into how people use words. I mean, can you imagine if you took all of the 20 or some odd Zodiac letters, analyzed them down to the minutest detail, and then compared them to the use of language across the entire Internet? What type of responses you might get. You might find people on the Internet unwittingly have been using the same type of words or the same type of grammar and whatnot. Now, this is kind of sketching it out in very broad brushstrokes, but that may be an idea of looking into who the Zodiac is. People spend a lot of time looking at the Zodiac letters and trying to say something about him. But the question is, how honest was he being in the letters? Letters in conjunction with a crime scene are pieces of staging in and of themselves. Letters are sent not to say something about the criminal, but to lead the criminal astray, to lead the police astray and not find the criminal. So what can we believe about sentences that he has reproduced in letters? What can we say about him? Some things about him, geographic locations or descriptions are not going to be sent, or they're going to be edited out of the letter before it's sent. But other things might get through unwittingly. That the Zodiac may have revealed more about himself than he realized and done it quite accidentally. One thing I point to is that in the more material letter, the Zodiac used three semicolons, and he used them exactly correctly. And nowhere else in his entire body of letters would. Would a semicolon be appropriate? Now, that says something about somebody? Because I don't know about you, but I didn't start using semicolons until my grad school education. I know I was first. I first learned about semicolons in high school, but I didn't know how to use them and never even attempted it. And most people who are not educated do not use semicolons. And here is a writer who's using a semicolon three times in the course of a three page letter. Now, that says something about his education. It says something about his intelligence. It says something about his ability to write. But what exactly it does say is open to interpretation.
- [48:32]
Well, that's an interesting point, because like you said, our language, not just spoken, but written language, comes from our background. But you could also fake that on some level. The great writer David Foster Wallace used to say, if you put me in a room by myself for long enough, I'll come up with intelligent things to say and intelligent points of view. I do agree with you that the writings show some level of higher education.
- [49:03]
Yes. At the same time, he misspelled words. He misspelled firing F, I, R, E, I, N, G or having H, A, V E, I, N, G. And he spelled kid cid. So what's going on here with somebody who's sophisticated enough to use a semicolon but can't spell a basic third grade word of having or firing?
- [49:27]
But to your point, is he choosing to misspell those words?
- [49:31]
I think it's. It's not only quite possible, I think it's the generally accepted view that he was attempting to fabricate his level of language by spelling those words. I know people who are convinced that the Zodiac is dyslexic. I'm not convinced of that. But it appears that he is messing with his level of intelligence. People today still argue about how intelligent was the Zodiac Some people say, well, no, he was just some idiot who scrawled a bunch of letters and didn't have a whole lot of education. And there are other people who say, no, no, he was quite intelligent. He was a criminal mastermind. Why is it that 50 years on, we're still discussing how intelligent he was in coming up with such incredibly diverse answers to that question? Well, that would seem to imply that he was indeed attempting to fool people with what he was writing. And also in conjunction with that, there's a broad enough amount of information and data on this criminal that you can make the evidence fit pretty much any suspect that you pick, provided you look at similarities and downplay or completely ignore anything that would tend to point the finger the other direction. So that's part of the fascination that people have with the Zodiac, that there's so much information in there, and yet the information points in a lot of different directions.
- [51:01]
So through the letters, there could be misdirection on one, his identity and also the level of intelligence. But maybe that's a clue into the ciphers. Because if I give you a bunch of ciphers to solve, but I create a couple ciphers that you can't solve, then that would also be misdirection on my level of intelligence as well.
- [51:27]
Sure, sure. We don't know how deeply embedded some of this misinformation is. For instance, in one letter, the Zodiac claims, kind of almost matter of fact, to have a basement in his house or in his living location. He mentions storing a bomb in his basement. Well, people immediately start saying, ah, he has a basement. Okay, he didn't tell us he had a basement, but he implied that. And therefore, he must be one of these rare individuals in the Bay Area who lives in a place that has a basement, because not a lot of Bay Area homes have basements. Other people have said, well, maybe basements, referring to something else like a garage that's called a basement. So it becomes an open question. Maybe the Zodiac realized that if he said something like that and made the implication that he had a basement, it would send the police running a certain direction looking for a basement where he had none. And if he was quite intelligent and quite criminally sophisticated, he could be leading people running around all over the place. I contend that the Zodiac, as he reveals himself in his letters, never actually existed. And the reason people have not been able to catch him is because they feel like they know him. They read all of his letters, and they get a sense of his personality and his goals and his identity, and so they Start looking for this person who never actually existed. It's a complete fabrication.
- [53:02]
Nick
It's an exaggeration or a fictitious character of himself that he's putting forward in these letters, I think is what a great way to describe that. In your second book, Mark, titled Profiled, you make a solid attempt at an evidence based criminal profile of the Zodiac killer. What did you do to learn how to attempt this? And just how difficult of a task do you think this was?
- [53:33]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
Yeah. Thank you. My second book, Profile, the Zodiac Examined, it's actually the. It's the second book of the trilogy. And my publisher is very high on the book because he says that it acts as a compendium to serial killers in general, not just the Zodiac. In the second book, I take the information from the first book and attempt to do a deep dive into the details, trying to unlock what it is that we know about the killer. The FBI has done a lot of work into serial killers over the decades. However, it did not start until after the Zodiac had quit killing. In fact, while the Zodiac was active, the term serial killer did not even exist in the words of the English language. It was not until Robert Ressler penned that phrase in the early 1970s that we have the word serial killer. The FBI has attempted to understand what makes a serial killer, what different types of serial killers there are, and what we can know and learn about each type. So I go through a lot of that information and I do a deep dive onto a lot of the forensics that's available from the story of the Zodiac from the various attacks. What forensic information do we have and what can we continue to look into? And the fact that we have letters. I mentioned that we can look into the wording and the specific use of words, but there have also been fingerprints collected in the aftermath of the attacks. There have been boot prints. There are ballistics. Shell casings were collected at the crime scenes, and eyewitness and ear witness reports from people in the vicinity. So all of these we can kind of get a handle on some of the information that we have about the Zodiac. I use a lot of FBI research and attempt to narrow down the type of person that we're looking for, who would be the Zodiac. I attempt to put together at the end of the book a criminal psychological profile of the. Of the perpetrator. I am not a profiler, and so I had to be very careful on what I said and what I conjectured, but I believe I followed very closely to FBI principles and what they now know about serial killers. The fact that They've been studied, gives us information that serial killers in reality are much different than the Hollywood caricature of serial killer. In Hollywood, serial killers are looked at as big and menacing and scary. And people are given the false sense of security that if they saw a serial killer, they would recognize him. Unfortunately, this is not the case. When a serial killer is active in an area, people get all afraid and they look for somebody who's big and scary and menacing. And yet what always happens following the arrest of the serial killer, the neighbors say, oh, he was such a quiet person. We never knew this about him. He was friendly, he seemed to love his family. Well, that's because the Hollywood version of a serial killer just does not exist in reality. Profilers have said that a serial killer looks like your banker, looks like your neighbor, looks like somebody in your community. Because for 99% of their lives, that's precisely what they are. Serial killing is something that they only do and only look like when they're engaged in that activity and engaged in murder. Not a lot of people when they hear that a serial killer is active in their community, think of, oh, Ted Bundy. Maybe he's a good looking young man. Or they don't think of Dennis Rader, btk, who was a president of his local church and an upstanding member of his community. But that's what we now know about serial killers because of FBI research. So I put together a psychological profile of the killer that runs four or five pages in length, looking at a lot of the details based on what we now know about serial killers and the types of and the people who have been arrested for serial killing. And so I venture guesses that he was probably a first born or oldest child or only child. He was approximately 30 years of age simply because that's the general age that serial killers tend to. They tend to start in ages 18 to 25. So anywhere from 25 to 30 is a likely guess. But there have also been estimates from eyewitnesses that he was 35 to 45 years of age. So that's kind of the things that I say about the killer in the profile. I say that he has a certain level of rage in his life. He is likely alienated from other people, has problems in relationships, has problems in his relationship with women. And all this is kind of basic information from the crime scenes themselves.
- [59:04]
Nick
Yeah, one thing it doesn't take. I don't have to go to the extensive training and exercise work that you did to come up with a profile. But the thing that jumps off the page. To me, that is. That is just obvious. This is not a love what I kill, kill what I love situation. This is a guy who. He's killing what he cannot be. He's killing what he hates. He's destroying what others have that he does not. And I feel like given the ciphers and a lot of this extra work that goes into what he's doing, it feels like a very loner type to me. A very loner type for much of his life, much before the killings and especially during these five murders.
- [59:58]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
Yeah, obviously, somebody who's going out and attacking strangers and killing them, there's something wrong with that person. There's something. Something not right in their relationships with other people. Their friendships and their other relationships are not supplying them with something.
- [60:16]
Nick
Did you include any post offense behaviors suspected or otherwise in your profile of the Zodiac killer?
- [60:23]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
Yeah. FBI research has noted that organized serial killers, those who are under great control and put a lot of effort into not being caught, they tend to gravitate toward alcohol in either pre or post offense behavior. Whereas somebody who is a disorganized serial killer would tend toward using a prescription medication or other street drugs. Then that's not a hard and fast rule. But because of that general tendency, I suggested that if the Zodiac was into some type of mood enhancing behavior, that alcohol might be involved. And some of his letters give a sense that they start very neat and very carefully scripted, but then tend to fall apart in sloppiness by the end of the letter. Gives the idea that maybe he was drinking as part of his post offense behavior. But also his activity of writing letters and making telephone calls, that also seemed to be very important behavior to him. Something that he repeated.
- [61:33]
Nick
Yeah, because the, the letters, the ciphers and all of that, it's. It's the same. It's all a part of what he's doing. It's. It's like Dennis Rader said, he didn't separate the trolling from victims from actually tying someone up. And it was all apart. It was all one. One thing to him. And I feel like with Zodiac, where we have some killers that are out trolling for victims and looking at, where do I procure a victim from? And, and where can I find someone who's vulnerable and find my victim type that I'm chasing with him? It's. It's less of the trolling and it's the behind the scenes work of manufacturing these ciphers and putting together letters and then the communications with newspapers or the police and the taunting of everyone, terrorizing the area.
- [62:32]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
Precisely. Everything that the Zodiac does is goes to his identity, who he is and what he's attempting to accomplish. And much of what he is and what he did we don't know about, because we don't know about his trolling. We don't know about any following he did or any stalking he was involved in. We don't know precisely what it looked like when he sat at a desk and wrote his letters, where he was, what he was thinking. But all of this factors into his personality and who he is and what makes him different than other members of society.
- [63:08]
Nick
Well, and one thing that I really tried to hit home for everyone when we. We did, just as you said, five episodes on the Zodiac Killer back in 2021, and that was episodes 470 through 474 in March of 2021. One thing I really tried to hit home in several of those episodes that I think is lost on some of the general public here. One thing that separates the Zodiac from a lot of other serial killers, even ones that communicate with the public and the media and such, is he. There is a large part of him that is a terrorist. And he, because he set forth to terrorize these communities and to scare them into place, to almost force people to stay inside. Don't let your kids stand at the bus stop. Don't let your kids come bouncing off of school buses at the end of the day, because if you do, I done warned you, you know, and on. On several occasions, at least one occasion, he's saying that he's going to go out and kill X amount of people for X amount of days until something that he wants to happen happens, almost like a list of demands that he's sending out. And one thing that I like about your books is you, that that aspect of his crimes and what he was attempting to do was not lost on you.
- [64:41]
Dr. Mark Hewitt
Yeah, that's quite true. He was a terrorist of the Bay Area. I continue to talk to people today who have very vivid memories of being a teenager or older and being in fear. Parents ginned up the fear by saying, don't go out alone. Be back by 8:00, or don't go down this road, because this road may have the Zodiac on it. People were terrified. They didn't understand what was taking place within them. All they knew was that this man was roaming around and suddenly, without provocation, pulling out a gun or pulling out a knife and killing people. And that. And that goes to his identity, who he was, what he was attempting to accomplish. He was not a serial killer who was looking to fulfill some type of sexual need. Where some serial killers will rape and kill their victims and then disappear and try not to get caught because they are satisfied, at least for the moment, by the act of what they are doing. This was a person who was killing. But then moving beyond that and the fact that he stopped killing and continued to write letters gives every indication that maybe the letter writing was more important to him or the publicity was more important to him than the acts of killing what he was doing. Maybe he only killed five people to prove to himself and to others that he could do that and he had earned enough street cred by that time that he could simply write letters and make threats and cause fear within the community because of what he had done previously.
- [66:38]
Want to thank you so much for joining us here in the garage for this great discussion on the Zodiac killer. Tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel.
- [66:47]
Nick
And until then, be good, be kind, and don't litter. Sa.
- [67:29]
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